Starship design challenges

 In this last iteration I've managed to utilise the cooling flow up to 5 kg/s liquid methane, while keeping the max. shield temperature reasonable for HASTELLOY, keeping enough structural strenght and oxidation resistance. The 3D simulation model is designed to provide correct enough results, while keeping it simple, which is nececesey for the reentry simulation itself.

This is just a very small part of the Starship reentry simulations I've performed. Wide range of conditions - different shield shapes, angle of attacks (AOA), velocities, atm. pressures and so on. CONCLUSION - ALL THEY BURN TILES AND CRINGE STEEL !!! THE TILES BASED SHIELD IS COMPLETELY DOOMED!!! ...what those people are thinking???

  After performing multiple flow reentry simulations with wide reentry conditions I have not other choice, but to conclude that using a tiles based shield is completely impossible. It would not be safe even for one reentry as the temperatures on the tiles surface of more than 50% of the shield area well exceeds 3000 K. At that point I am mildly said baffled, why this option was even considered. On the other hand I've proved without a doubt, that an internally cooled shield is the only viable solution. My simulations and calculations proved that 10kg/s to 15kg/s cooling methane would be enough to keep the shield temperature below 1400 K in the most heated areas. As well I've proved that expelling methane through holes in the shield is far worse than keeping the cold methane inside the shield "jacket" and expelling it through the upper part of the shield. With this information I will allow myself to make a prediction - If SpaceX does not scrap completely and fast this d...

 In this simulation I've tried to optimize the cooling methane flow by introducing several baffles. This makes the heat transfer from the shield to the cooling methane more efficient "trapping" the methane longer in the shield jacket. As a result the fresh 100K cold methane gas is heated up to 330K, which is about 7 KW cooling power in a 50 mm shield slice. If we approximate this to the full Starship length we get minimum necessary cooling power of  about 8400KW. Same reentry conditions - V=6000m/s and Patm.=15 Pascals. If we consider the methane liquid-vapor phase transfer energy I think that 10 tons of methane should be enough for a 15 min. long reentry cooling. However this is on optimistic side and 15 tons methane should provide enough safety margin.